Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure generally relates to processors, and more particularly to execution of loops at a processor.
Description of the Related Art
Processor architectures typically employ an instruction pipeline having multiple stages, each stage performing corresponding operations to process the instructions. These stages generally include a fetch stage, a decode stage, a dispatch stage, and an execution stage, among others. The fetch stage operates to fetch instructions from memory and provide the fetched instructions to the decode stage, which decodes the provided instructions into micro-operations. The dispatch stage dispatches the micro-operations to corresponding execution units at the execution stage. In a conventional system, the execution of an instruction requires the fetching and decoding of the instruction for each instance of the instruction in a program order.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.